How do you organize your cellar?

WINE TALK
61

This is a continuing, and as yet unsolvable, problem for me. When inventory is smaller (2500<), it’s not as big a deal to re-organize once a year or so. With a very large inventory, it just does not happen.

One problem is that I prefer to pull wines based on visual inspection in the cellar, not based a look at CT. I use CT for records management, not for day to day use of my cellar. So how do you do this with lots inventory? I prefer to have a cellar organized by type (red, white, sparkling, dessert, port, etc.) followed by region, then variety, then vintage, and then producer because that’s how I typically decide what to pull. I didn’t see many comments above that were maturity-driven (“what do I most need to drink”), but that’s my reality. I have a friend who sorts first by vintage, but I think that is problematic as well.

Another problem is what to do as you consume bottles and new vintages come in the door. Again, with a very large cellar, periodic re-organiztion just isn’t going to happen. Fill the spaces randomly? Really works only if you don’t visually select your bottles, as noted above.

And so I have a mess. And have had a mess for 5+ years. I can’t seem to re-orient to selecting bottles off CT, and I end up frustrated that I can’t find things…and frustrated when I find “lost” bottles that have died. I’ve always wished that Eric would incorporate a virtual component into CT that would provide a visual representation of your cellar sorted by personal preferences. That might help me make the leap to using CT as an analog to physical selection of bottles. Cellar organization and even racking design would be a non-issues beyond fitting the bottles in somewhere.

62

Several people on the CT forum have come up with ways to do this in a spreadsheet for years now. For example: http://www.cellartracker.com/forum/fb.asp?m=9035" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

63

What Bob Summers said. I have three locations, all with a 3-D grid by rows, columns, and position within each row/column combination. Makes it easy, and I could’t care less what is in which slot since I already know when browsing CT! for what I want to drink.

And sometimes, for fun, I just open a cooler and pull something out. If I had more organization (i.e., storage by region/variety/etc.) then it would be far less random :slight_smile:

64

Historically, I organized my wines based on drinkability and region. The single bottle reacks mostly (everything is mostly) hold wines that I selected for drinking in the next year or so. The diamond racks are to hold wines needing more aging and the stacks of cases are for the wines needing the most aging.

Now cellar tracker makes it so easy to find bottles that my methodology is evolving and I am filling in more of the holes in all the racks and getting rid of the boxes.

65

I have a similar arrangement to that as described by Peter S. With some varations:

  1. I label the rows on my diamond racks AA, BB etc, my individual racks AAA, BBB, etc, and big shelves A, Bs etc. The columns are lableled numbers 1 from the top to whatever it is at the bottom. Basically it is a grid system.

  2. I use 4 spreadsheets: France, Italy, US, and rest of the world. This limits the size of each spreadsheet for searching purposes.

With this arrangement I can put a wine anywhere in my cellar (although wines from the same country tend to find the same bin) and as long as it is entered into the Excel spreadsheet, I can find it.

newhere

66

Sounds like that is still text, though, based on his description. His links are dead, so I can’t actually see it.

67

CT user here, so my ‘organization’ is pretty much via CT views.

But as to date I have only had about 10-15% of my wine at home and the rest in offsite storage, I have had a general organizing concept of attempting to keep the near term drinkers at home - pretty difficult to manage. However I have had a new cellar constructed, and as soon as the racking arrives (100% individual bottle), I will everything but recent deliveries immediately at hand.

Within the location constraint above, a view of either Producer/Varietal/Vintage or Varietal/Vintage/Producer generally does the trick for me, although using the Drinkability report from time to time has been quite valuable as well. Occasionally I go down there and just decide on a bottle but since the placement in racks is random, this is not a useful approach assuming you are starting out with some general concept of what you want. No, I almost always start w/ a CT search, which means I have high expectations for Eric’s availability (and my own home connectivity). So far I have been extremely satisfied, and have thus been contributing for several years now.

Because my offsite storage has always been box storage, my general bin size is a case, and for ease of administration I tend to keep that size where possible in my home racking as well. That means I have to hunt a little bit, esp. w/ double deep racking, but doing all the editing for exact bin/slot would be way too A/R for me.

68

I hadn’t thought of using seperate spreadsheets for each region, but it’s certainly an idea worth considering. [cheers.gif]

The best thing I ever did was to add a column for drink/hold. This way when the spreadsheet is sorted by drink/hold, you can print only the wines that are currently drinkable. The printout is much shorter and it’s a heck of a lot easier to wander into the cellar, peruse the printout, and choose a wine for dinner.

69

Excel users, you need to learn the magic of PivotTables and/or AutoFilter. No need to put things in separate sheets…

70

Hi Eric,
Being the creator of CT you are the King in Excel while for mere mortals like me I do use Pivot tables and autofilter to count bottles by vintage and region. The problem is sometimes there are so many different wines that I forgot and have to scroll down to see what catch my pleasure for the evening. pileon

Cheers!

71

I have some offsite storage lockers. The wines I have at the very back of each locker are barolos and Huet. I have recently gone through the lockers and put the ones at the very front that are coming into the ir drinking window. One of the benefits of doing the inventory is that I found a case 2001 Reinhold Haart Piesporter Goldtropfchen Spatlese in the very back that I had forgotten I had bought. I moved that one to the front.

72

organized chaos.

organized when i first built the cellar; chaos ever since.

CT saves me from having to memorize where everything is. I could probably do that, but I figure that it would be problematic after consuming a few bottles.

73

I use CT for about 800 bottles. I have three lockers at Strongbox, and a 50-btl cooler at home.

The largest locker (60-cs) has wire shelving (5 shelves), and all wine is in cardboard or wood. The boxes are labeled carton 1, shelf A (1A etc.). Boxes on shelves are nice— they are stacked no more than two high, two deep.

Next largest (30-cs) has double deep wood rack for individual bottles. These racks are 5 across (A-E), 18 high (1-18), so A1 etc. There is also a shelf on top for mags and stickies (bin name “top” in CT).

Smallest locker is 24-cs, just stacked cardboard and wood, boxes labeled AA, BB etc.

Each box has a 5x8 label on outside with quantity/wine marked either by hand or a label made from CT.

The cooler at home is random.

The main problem is that there is no wireless access at Strongbox, so all inventory changes need to be noted by hand, and entered into CT at home.

I screw this up frequently. [snort.gif]

74

It might make sense to barcode these offsite bottles. Then you can scan bottle ID’s into a spreadsheet and keep track of locations and then pretty easily bulk update after the fact.

75

Not even on your phone?

76

Well …
(well…)

OK:
…

The positive aspects of my system:
In my cellar I have both racks (self-made) for 12 and for 6 bottles - and one for single bottle storage. All are divided into
a) Bordeaux
b) Burgundy
c) Rhone
d) other (Provence, Languedoc …)
with an additional corner for Austrians (mainly white) + some Germans and Loire, sweeties and Champagne as well as every day wines.
On one side of the cellar is a huge table with space (below and above) for full cases …
Usually bottles are stored old to young …

In my PC I have created an access-file, where I can enter:
country (mainly F and A)
region (A, Bx, Bd, Rh etc.)
variety (for A and D only)
taste (dry, sweet, sparkling, rosé …)
vintage
producer
climat, classification etc.
purchase price
value
points
… and where it is stored.

I can search in the file what I want, I can filter it, sort it … what ever is necessary …

A perfect system for me !!!
flirtysmile

The negative aspects : [cry.gif]

Almost all racks are full - or at least theoretically full with quite a lot empty spaces from drunk bottles …
Because of space problems many (I mean MANY) wines are still in their cases …

In the access-file I´m 5 vintages BEHIND with my new purchases (and there are a LOT) … and 5 years behind eliminating all drunk bottles …

Thanks god I have an excellent memory what I have, what I drank … and (most of the times) where it is stored (better: where it should be …) [whistle.gif]

I´m actually in the process of going thru my whole cellar, typing all new purchases into the file, filling all spaces in the racks and re-organizing the original cases …
I don´t think I will finish until my holidays in France end of August …

[shock.gif]

77

At present, I have a phone, with which I speak to people. neener And I can’t even get a signal for that in the concrete bunker that is Strongbox.

This may change. [wow.gif]